Thursday, December 20, 2007

Sorry for my prolonged absence. And thank you Pundy for the kind concern. Not, sadly, caused by intense bouts of novel writing to complete by the Christmas deadline. Just mundane computer and internet problems doubled, trebled till I got that computer-induced screaming, wailing in my head. Followed by acceptance, will never be online at home again etc etc. Laptop sent back to its maker, after endless helpline chats with John Lewis, Toshiba, Netgear, BT in India, exacerbated by - oh I won't go on. I'm writing this in Hounslow library,on an old keyboard that rattles every time I hit the space bar.

So, I've been writing by hand. After the initial shock, an interesting side-track. I went through the rest of the detailed new outline, seeing where additions were needed and, rather than trying to write write, made up some relevant dialogue for the slots. I've no idea if it's all going to fit in, or how far I've got now with the rewrite. I crashed down at around Chapter 8. There is definitely a feeling of getting towards the end, and have extended deadline to new year, which is when agent is expecting it. I came across a couple of new threads that weren't there in the beginning, style things, that I don't know if I'd have stumbled upon if I'd continued on the computer. They will make small changes to the beginning chapters, that should only hopefully become relevant when the end chapters are revealed. It was therefore the right decision not to send anything else out until I felt the whole book was complete.

Now I'm off to research Zen broadband, the network I've decided to sign up with. It seems to be the top choice in all the polls, slightly more expensive but - AK 'you have five minutes remaining,please save your work' ticker going right across this screen.

Monday, December 03, 2007

...tonight I read Yeats for about an hour, and I shall do this. An hour in the morning and again at night. Up to the inventing of Caxton's press, and for most people long after, all reading was done aloud. Most people were incapable of reading silently. And Eliot says that the best thing a poet can do is read aloud poetry as much as he can. This should be sound. Silent reading only employs the parts of the brain that are used in vision. Not all the brain. This means that a silent reader's literary sense becomes detached from the motor parts and the audio parts of the brain which are used in reading aloud - tongue and ear. This means that only one third of the mental components are present in their writing or in their understanding of reading - one third emotional charge. This explains Amis and Wain and the rest, -. Painting is successful within its limits using only this part of the brain because it uses exclusively visual symbols. But only a fraction of a verbal idea is visual. And these people, besides naturally lacking the other essential components of ear, touch, muscle etc are frightened of a visual effect for theoretical reasons. The only thing they can do then, is to cultivate arch attitudes, or a hocus of mathematical dexterity, which deceives only their own inferior breed which in an age of silent cram-readers are crowded over every page they care to write.The wind will get rid of those people, and there's no need to argue them away. This is quite true though - Beethoven composed singing and roaring and walking very fast and so did Dostoevsky - not singing but vociferating. So read aloud a lot, and read aloud poetry as you walk to and fro in your room timing the metre to your steps. This would be ideal but you'll think it too ridiculous. I am now going to make a cup of Chocolate a la Tomas Ortunio and retire....